BI - Business Intelligence

Introduction SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 (SAP BO 4.0) is the long awaited, with SAP Business Intelligence / SAP Business Warehouse integrated, version of BusinessObjects. With the acquisition of BusinessObjects by SAP in 2007, customers were having a lot of questions about the future of the then market-leading Business Intelligence solution. Depending on the side you are (were) on, these questions will have a different viewing angle on this newly released version.

Introduction Between previous versions of Business Objects and the SAP Business Objects XI platform, the vision on security and the complexity of the security has changed a lot. The security has switched from a user-centric model to an object-centric one and from 2 levels of security to many more levels. When migrating to SAP BO XI, one needs to take these drastic changes into account.

Introduction Often reports need to show data in a tree-like structure. This is enabled via characteristic hierarchies in SAP BW. High level data is displayed using the top nodes of the hierarchy. More detailed data can be visualized by drilling down to the lower nodes of the hierarchy. Consider an example hierarchy Customer Contacts Hierarchy' that is used to qualify the telephone calls a telecommunications call center receives.  

Introduction Early November 2010, IBM Cognos 10 was finally released. "Business Intelligence Unleashed” was the –as usual- catchy and (overly ?) promising marketing slogan. Expectations were rather high as this was the first major release since Cognos had been acquired by IBM in 2007. Currently part of the IBM Business Analytics software offering, IBM Cognos 10 offers a lot of enhancements compared to the previous version.